Join us Above the Bookshop with writer Luke Thompson for an evening exploring the fascinating and strange world of human-animal conversation. Spanning the ancient and modern, the scientific and the strange, Thompson’s journey takes him from the stories of King Solomon and medieval dragon-slayers to extra-terrestrial aliens and a poltergeist mongoose, via Harvard laboratories, floatation tanks and pet psychics.

Wednesday 2nd October
6:30pm
Above the Bookshop
£6/£8

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What do the longest-serving Canadian Prime Minister and a ketamine-injecting psychonaut have in common? What would a poltergeist mongoose say if you spoke to him on a Ouija board? Would talking spiders be more believable if they had lips? These are some of the important questions Luke Thompson seeks to answer in this exploration of human-animal conversation.

Spanning the ancient and modern, the scientific and the strange, Thompson’s journey takes him from the stories of King Solomon and Doctor Dolittle to medieval dragon-slayers and extraterrestrial aliens, via Harvard laboratories, Caribbean Waters, and the discipline of anthrozoology.

Always eccentric and always fascinating, Domadomadoma-Blumblumblum sees Thompson navigate these peculiar landscapes – whether lowering himself into a flotation tank or training as a pet psychic – with many questions on his mind: What exactly do we want from conversations with our fellow animals? What portrait of the world do we paint when we envisage these communications? And how far are we willing to go to realise this dream?

Luke Thompson is a writer and publisher from Cornwall. His books include the poetry collection Singing About Melon (Shearsman, 2020), the long essay Rhinoceros (Broken Sleep, 2020) and A Guillemot Guide to Very Small Press Publishing (Guillemot Press, 2022). He has edited several books on Cornwall and Cornish writers, including Treasures of Cornwall (Macmillan, 2023) and Selected Poetry of Jack Clemo (Enitharmon 2015). As well as books, Luke has produced text-generating poetry games, including a Phonetic Ouija Board and Psychic Test Cards.